I know Debian and others can breathe life into older machines. But i wonder if there are any distros with serious optimizations that I haven’t heard of. I’ve already tried MX Linux on an old Thinkpad SL400, and didn’t see any difference from plain Debian.

Update: thanks for the great suggestions. Forgot to say many distros feel zippy and fast until you open a web browser. Appreciate your thoughts on which web browser to use too. So far I’ve had a positive experience with Thorium and Chromium.

  • llothar@lemmy.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    The problem with older machines is the web browsing, not the system itself. You could use a browser with Java script disabled but a lot of websites will refuse to work.

    You have to sacrifice with browser functionality to improve performance.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’ve had good experiences with Midori and Dillo as alternative browsers on low-memory machines. Obviously features will take a hit but they’re surprisingly functional. Don’t expect to be able to open many tabs but you can do the usual things including YouTube etc.

  • 0x0@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    So Slackware? If you can cross-compile then maybe gentoo. I’m not sure if Raspberry Pi Desktop is x86.